


Windswept

by Palebluedot



Category: Black Sails
Genre: (but i love it with my whole self), Davy Jones AU, Fantasy, M/M, also tragically unaffiliated with other works in this 'verse, but it appears to have been taken down, but ohhhhhh he will be, calypso!flint, john is not yet long john silver/davy jones, so just know that this 'verse is NOT MY IDEA, this really should say 'inspired by' that one headcanons compilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot/pseuds/Palebluedot
Summary: “I will soon require an answer of you,” James murmurs in John's ear, and John is almost glad he cannot see his face. His touch and his voice may wear away his defenses to silt and sand, given time, but those sea glass eyes will cut through his rigging with one look – especially a soft one. “Those souls out there,” James continues in distant tones, “most of them are too far gone to know the way to the peace that eludes them, much less swim towards it. The sea won't let them go. Or they won't let go of it.”





	Windswept

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohflint (faeseoks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeseoks/gifts), [kambarbay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kambarbay/gifts).



> To the masterminds behind this ADDICTING 'verse, you should know that you had me entirely on board long before "what a windswept love, being the beloved of a sea god." Whether it's with brutally poetic and poignant edits or stunning, tender, artwork, you both just blow me away every time, so it's really no surprise that I couldn't get an AU that came from both of you out of my head. I hope I've done this sweeping, intricately-crafted idea of yours at least some small measure of justice! <3
> 
> [The Wolves and the Ravens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dhfKp7MX2k) by Rogue Valley was essentially my co-author, so if you like to have soundtracks while you read, or enjoy pretty music as a rule, I recommend it.

To say John knows him by the smell of the sea would be idiotic; fucking everything smells like the sea out here. There's not a breath of air that's gone untouched, and sea breezes are only breezes, after all, made of naught but air...but oh, how they stir the soul. To reduce them to winds that have kissed the surface of the water robs them of the most important part of their story – what tide in the heart compelled them to drown themselves in the first place, and why they failed, and lived to carry the tale with them as they fly past, bury in the nose, in the lungs. So John knows him by the intensification of that compulsion to breathe the salt air deep and deeper still, the widening of the cavity in his chest that can be filled only by the beckoning waves whose curling fingers first opened it so long ago.

Of course, the warm surf rolling across the deck just far enough to lap at his feet is another clue. John curls his toes, and sand as soft as powder remembers their shape. His sea god has made a beach for him, he realizes with a smile. And he never had to ask.

“Hello,” he says in that quiet way that means _it's you_ , and the wash laughs against the hull. From behind him, fingers rough as any sailor's reach out to brush the hair from John's brow, and leave ghosting trails of salt in their wake.

Hands settle on the rail beside John's, barely grazing, and John has to force himself to _look_. James shifts forms so often, diluting himself through the great currents or concentrating all his being into one capsizing kiss – it is hard, still, to accept the tactile reality of what he knows to be but a faint veneer of what it is he loves, the clouds that cloak the lightning. Then those hands skim along his arms – arms that prickle with gooseflesh now, a little – and an embrace John trusts the way he trusts his mast circles his waist, and reminds him for the thousandth time that perhaps the lightning is not cloaked, but sculpted, sharpened. It slips between his ribs like a blade, and John sinks back to the hilt of it, leans against that strange, broad chest without a heartbeat, and breathes.

The moment John rests fully against him, his temple tilted against James's cheek, the stars freckled across James's skin flare up, for a heartbeat shine to match the ones John so often plots his courses by, and the sigh in his ear is the sound breaking waves imitate when they crash and drag against the shore. John doesn't know if such displays are for his benefit. He likes to think they're not, that even in a world shaped by unseen powers with wills like iron, some things are involuntary. Nonetheless, the tightening of those arms around him is a welcome one, and when John folds his hands over James's own, he finds them solid enough to be real, if only for a little while.

The waves turned to ink by the surrounding midnight whisper and chant far below their feet, in tide-pull tandem with the phantom surf in which they stand. Warm water stroking against his ankles, warm arms holding him near – John never would have pegged James as such a romantic, at the start. Sometimes being proven wrong is a blessing, he supposes. Not often, but he never could have predicted a peace as full as this one, and doesn't mind admitting it, just so long as it stays.

“I will soon require an answer of you,” James murmurs in John's ear, and John is almost glad he cannot see his face. His touch and his voice may wear away his defenses to silt and sand, given time, but those sea glass eyes will cut through his rigging with one look – especially a soft one. “Those souls out there,” James continues in distant tones, “most of them are too far gone to know the way to the peace that eludes them, much less swim towards it. The sea won't let them go. Or they won't let go of it.”

And there's that peculiar way James talks of the sea. He _is_ the sea, but he speaks of it as something separate, something he commands – but of course, it's just as untrammeled and wild as he, and answers to no one, bites the hand that leads it. The metaphysics of it all are strange to John. All he knows is that when James is near, deep within him, the winds turn favorable and his sails blow wide.

“They need someone to talk to them,” James says, and for a moment, John can _feel_ it, feel himself drifting beneath the surface without so much as a heartbeat to his name, railing against a god that hears but does not answer, blinded by the refracting sun and terrified by its absence. Lost. Wishing to drown again, and wash away. “Someone to lead them from the dark.”

“And you think it should be me.” It's not a question. This is not the first time James has whispered this seduction in his ear, this challenge. John shakes his head. However has he ended up here, so far from where he began? “Ferryman of the drowned – it seems a strange post to leave unfilled. I can hardly believe I would be the first. Whatever happened to the last one, I wonder?”

James's silence is resounding and remorseless. John huffs. The fucking _ocean_ – it gets in your head. John was a sailor long before he knew James, for better or for worse, and heaven help him, he loves the mercurial waves, the glassy calms and the howling gales, and he has learned, he thinks, to read the map they make. But though it is impossible, though he knows he wouldn't want to hear it, sometimes he wishes the sea could give him a _straight fucking_ _answer_ from time to time.

But John makes no move to push James from him. Perhaps this is an answer of a different kind. “I see,” he says at last.

“You do,” James agrees, thoughtful. “More than most.” The lowness of his voice recalls to John's mind a night not so long ago when he told James how his hair reminded him so of that eastern fire on the open water, not just the color – _red sky at morning, sailors take warning_ – but the way it seemed to glow, thrum with flame, and James, almost fragile, confessed that he couldn't understand how John saw this form with such clarity. Nobody looks to the sea and sees it as it is, he said, troubled. They find mermaids in manatees and imagine the winds might take their whims into account if they only focus them into prayer. Mortals were never meant to – he never finished the sentence. John decided he'd much rather taste the salt from those lips than hear them say why he should never have gotten the chance to press flush against a body that ripples and swells and drags him under, to pull the fiery hair of a sea god and feel his moans steal the breath from his lungs. Now, James ducks his head, noses at John's pulse, makes it skip. “Will you do it?” he asks, and perhaps John hears more than most, too – James did not have to add the _anyway_.

Well, thinks John, two can play at being so goddamn cryptic for a change, and doesn't make a sound. Beyond the bow, black waves rush under a midnight sky, and James mouths lightly at his throat, his whiskers scuffing. His teeth catch for an instant – before John's sharp gasp dies in the close space between them, his hand scrabbles upwards, fists in James's hair, and he doesn't pull him away or tug him closer, just...holds him there. He swallows, quivers, and James's smile spreads slow along John's skin. Despite his silence, his answer hangs in the air as clear as the stars, as the fact that the picked-clean bones of the last ferrier were never buried, and tumble still in the depths.

“Yes,” John rasps, resigned and exalted. He could almost laugh for the weight of that one word, how he ever thought he could hold it back. “But you'd better make it worth my fucking while.”

“Don't I always?” James grins, still so close, and the very blood within John crests and roils. “Make port as soon as you're able,” comes the smiling order in his ear. “Keep only those men you trust. When again you set sail, the souls will call you, and you'll know the way. After ten years, you will understand what a small amount of time you gave.” The promise dripping from those words reminds John abruptly of that vital fact he'd forgotten somewhere in the graze of James's lips against his ear – what rewards lie ten years over the horizon. Before he can dwell on that awe and terror, rough fingers press against the side of his jaw, turning his head back over his shoulder, and the blaze of those eyes like tempests burns John to his core. “And until time itself is spent,” James whispers in a rush against his mouth, “I will be yours, just as you are mine now.”

James is, John knows, pride roaring, at least a little bit his already, the urgency of his kiss betrays a hunger not explained by conquest alone – but a little is not enough. The darkest, most ravenous maw of John's mutinous heart wants nothing less than to swallow the oceans to the last drop. If ten years are what it takes, then ten years he will give. He is not a foolish man; he knows the worth of things, and James – nothing compares, is the tragic, simple truth. That first gasp of undertow ruined him utterly for the loving caresses of any air free of the waves. John twists the hand still fisted in James's hair, and the ship creaks and groans around them as James surges closer, hotter, wilder –

John stumbles forwards, alone, knuckles white on the rail and gasping like a breath he seized as soon as James touched him has escaped at last. Heart frantic, knees weak – he _always_ does this, can't help but drain John's lungs when he leaves, the air itself feels his loss as keenly as John does. Loving a god, John muses, panting over the side, might just be bad for his health.

And _there's_ the understatement of a lifetime, John would laugh, had he the breath. Ten years, ten _years_ he's pledged, and with hardly a thought. He'll live to regret this – or worse, he won't. He can hardly undo it now, though, even if he wanted to. Somehow, holding a god in his arms has not complicated his non-belief in destiny, but he can't help but feel as though all this was decided that night he went below decks to find a figure in the dark, a smirking rumble about half-true ghost stories. He pushes himself upright with unsteady hands, and a lock of hair falls in front of his eyes. From the east, a sharp wind that is not sweet sweeps it back. John smiles breathlessly on the horizon, and though there is no longer any soft sand to remember the shape, his toes curl.

**Author's Note:**

> PROBABLY INCOMPLETE LIST OF THINGS THAT WERE NOT MY IDEA/WERE DIRECTLY INSPIRED BY THAT HC POST I CAN'T LINK TO:  
> \- Long John Silver as Davy Jones figure/James as Calypso (duh)  
> \- James's freckles matching real constellations  
> \- the deliberately vague implication that James will make John a god after ten years so they can Be Together™  
> \- James not having a heartbeat  
> \- James being taken aback that John sees that particular form  
> \- "that night he went below decks to find a figure in the dark, a smirking rumble about half-true ghost stories" (alludes to the account of their first meeting)  
> \- the title  
> \- tl;dr if you liked something it was a borrowed toy 
> 
> Comments - and more works in this 'verse - are love!


End file.
